An interesting 1958 video on the future of transport. It’s interesting to see how optimistic people were about the future of car-based transport, or just on how technological advancement would improve the world. While I do spent a lot of my time hassling 1950s transport thinking, I do accept that at the time these planners really did think they were changing the world for the better. It’s also amazing how widespread this thinking remains, around 50 years later.
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WTF..! An episode of the Jetsons…
It seems we can see why we have all the problems today, they basically wanted the whole US to be a low denisty city covered in motorways..!
*Shudders*
How much resources did they think the Earth has..?
I like the bit where dad goes to work and mum and the kids go to the mall… oh boy have times changed.
Brilliant. But what happens if you are colour blind?
“he’ll have to walk to his desk” a ha ha! Poor guy can’t afford a moving sidewalk from the garage to his chair!
Jezza if you like that, google Broadacre City for Frank Lloyd Wrights vision of the future. He quite literally wanted to demolish all the cities in the US and disperse people and structures evenly across the continent in a super low density semi-rural sprawl linked by a grid of mega highways. Kinda like Le Corbusier’s vision for Paris but on a continental scale.
One thing all these futurists seem to ignore is the immense cost of building a grid of such high speed motorways over such a great expanse.
What both cracks me up and disturbs me is the one where the family is having breakfast in the car.
Well people do do that, but without the auto-pilot… actually, wait, they are on autopilot, thats why they never ‘see’ motorcyclists or cyclists.
But yeah, where the hell were the people in all of that?
Two things of interest to me:
1) How cheap they expected energy to be. I guess in pre-Chernobyl days there was an expectation that nuclear energy could provide that.
2) A lack of general people/congestion. I guess the low densities made that expected.
I love this video! Totally the Jetsons! What strikes me is the 1950s mentality, of mom, dad and the kids (the so called nuclear family), and the specific fact that dad IS the breadwinner. Thank goodness this is changing. Man is equal to woman.
@Jarbury on point 1, not unless they expected Jetcars to run on electricity..!
Well they did mention atomic powered electo-suspension cars!
Not far off the maglev test route that operates in japan actually, it is electro-magnetically suspeneded and draws power from the nuclear energy grid.
Maglev is pretty amazing stuff. I must say it would be awesome to have that optimism.